Notes from Nanette

OK, so hectoring works. Thanks for the nudge(s), Amy, and thanks to you and Corinne for setting up the blog and the website. I've been a regular reader, if not yet a contributor, to this point.

I remember that pregnant sex-ed teacher, too. She was a former nun (!) who also told us that you could tell whether or not boys were circumcised "right off the bat," which immediately struck me as an interesting turn of phrase.

Hard to believe that 20 years have gone by and hard to know where to start, so I'll take the advice of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music and begin at the beginning.

Like several other alumni, I attended UCLA, where I majored in English and Communications. I was working full time at Ralph's almost all through college, so those years are a bit of a blur. Jeff Hunt and I were roommates for a while in Venice beach during this time. I also shared an apartment in the Hollywood Hills with Irene and Corinne at different times.

After graduation, I landed a job as a feature writer with the L.A. Independent Newspapers, a freebie for which I served as the class clown, writing about the weird and wacky throughout L.A. During my time there - and thanks to Irene, who invited me along one fateful night - I met Matt, my British screenwriter husband-to-be at the wonderfully divey Burgundy Room on Cahuenga in Hollywood. We met on either January 1 or 2, 1993, but can never remember which day because I expect we were both nursing post-New Year's Eve sore heads.

Within three weeks, we knew we were going to be a permanent sort of item and by the end of the year, we were living in a quaint (read "ridiculously small") flat in Stoke Newington, north London. I remember seeing Matt's face drop as he spotted my suitcases when he picked me up at Heathrow. Unlike the U.S., Europe is most definitely not known for walk-in closets.

We got married on the first day of Spring, March 21, 2004. I started work shortly thereafter as a feature writer with a photo syndication agency. We lived in London for three years when the Summer that didn't happen (a bit like the current one England's enjoying) convinced us to head back to L.A.

I worked as the U.S. bureau chief for the agency for three years, scouting photographers to syndicate their work internationally.

During that time, our daughter Daisy was born on the 1st of March, 1998, and her sisters Olivia and Rosie followed on the 6th of January, 2000. (Only in L.A. side note: CHiPs' Erik Estrada and his wife, also named Nanette, were having a baby at the same hospital at the same time as I had Olivia and Rosie.)

The agency didn't think that I could continue working with three under two in the house, so I found myself on the hunt for work. A friend put me forward for a PR job with Convergys, a company that provides outsourced customer care, HR services and billing, and I was hired to be their national-level media PR person based at their European regional office in Cambourne, outside Cambridge, England.

After three years, we were relocated again, this time to Cincinnati, where Convergys has its headquarters.

Another three years along, I'm still a member of the media relations team, based in Cincinnati. I am responsible for securing media coverage in national-level business and financial media globally, with a special responsibility for India, which I had to good fortune to visit last year as a host for a media tour I organized.

My mom and stepdad sold up in L.A. to be near us and their granddaughters and it's great having family near by. We've also been lucky enough to make many good friends, so every now and again, the house rocks with massive dinner parties. The kids run riot through the basement as the adults show off their best moves to the many '80s CDs I burned during a wave of nostalgia earlier this year.

We just got back from a trip to England to visit Matt's family. We also visited Pisa, where the picture above was taken (Rosie, 7, Daisy, 9, and Olivia, 7, are standing in front of me and Matt, and we're all standing in front of the Leaning Tower, which is much more tilty than it looks in this snap!).

And that's the past 20 years in a rather large nutshell. I keep in touch with Irene and Corinne most regularly and a few others, including Marita, more sporadically. If anyone else wants to drop me a line, I'd love to year from you. You can find me at the imaginative e-mail address of nanettebentley@hotmail.com.

Take care!
Nanette